WEDNESDAY, 2 JULY 1997, THE ATACAMA DESERT (Llano de la Paciencia)

Nomad had a relatively easy time today, driving on mostly flat
ground. Unfortunately the same cannot be said for our 4-wheel drive
trucks. Normally that would be fine, but in this case one of our gas
cans was not tied securely, which we didn't realize until we stopped
driving. Thus we unwittingly created yet another treasure waiting to
be found in the Atacama.

Today we welcomed back our Real Time computing expert Mark
Sibenac. He had been to see a doctor in Antofagasta because he'd felt
ill, but seems to be doing better now. His main immediate problem is
that his new diet prevents him from drinking as much leche condensada
(condensed milk) as he used to with nearly every meal.

Although the desert is vast, and we hardly ever pass anyone on
the road even during the 40 minute drive back to camp (25 minutes if
certain people are driving), today a pair of geologists stumbled
across Nomad while working in the field. One was Chilean and the
other was from the US, and they spoke with our field people for some
time. They had heard about Nomad in the news, and also knew about
NASA's Sojourner robot, which is due to land on Mars in two days. At
least one of them has a keen interest in remote exploration, and
really appreciated the idea of Nomad being controlled from very far
away. He looks forward to checking out our Internet sites when he
gets back from the Atacama; for most folks it probably works the other
way around.

We are making further progress with the autonomous driving. A
recent extension to Nomad enables it to not just avoid obstacles, but
also proceed toward a specific goal point. Today we demonstrated that
improved mode of autonomy for 273 meters, with an additional 52 meters
of safeguarding. He hope to overcome the integration difficulties
that make it difficult to use safeguarding fulltime in the next few
days. Our real-time expert also promises to deliver an improved
logging system that will enable us to give rough but reasonably
accurate distance measurements at the end of each day.